


Coin Collecting

by flecksofpoppy



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Cherik - Freeform, Gen, M/M, Meta, first fic in this fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 21:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flecksofpoppy/pseuds/flecksofpoppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles collects memories like coins.  First XMFC fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coin Collecting

Charles collects memories like coins. It’s a childhood habit, really, since his earliest memories are not his own. He’s always found the recollections of others to be the most revealing, what they hold in their memory bank’s brightest corners, what shines to them.

The first time he read his mother’s mind, he realized how important it is to keep to oneself.

Her brightest memory is of receiving her first diamond necklace, a gemstone flashing there in her subconscious, just as cool and indifferent as her everyday demeanor.

Upon digging through her, like an impatient child through a toy bin, Charles unearths a gossamer web of _pretty_ things – the glint of gold in the sun, the sparkle of fabric against a dance floor, the shimmer of coiffed hair in the low glow of an evening sun at a summer party.

There is no memory of him beyond a baby’s screams.

***

Charles wishes he could take Raven’s brightest memories for himself, but he promised he wouldn’t over their first shared midnight snack, and so he settles for the vague impressions of happiness and bright light in passersby on the street.

Straining to delve into foreign minds is either unethical or too painful; therefore, Charles limits his telepathic escapades in later years to meaningless pub conquests. The girls are as pretty as his mother’s diamond necklace, and just as ephemeral.

And then: the ocean, something sharper than any coin in its harsh light, pain, agony and wretched despair.

How Charles will always remember that first moment with Erik, cerebral yet physically painful, the dive into frigid water as well as a plunge into a stubborn, angry mind.

But eventually, over the terrain of the American south and the Eastern seaboard, Charles finds a warm glow there in Erik’s mind – desire and sentimentality that even Erik did not expect.

***

Charles’s expression settles as gently as a heavy anchor at the bottom of a tumultuous ocean, slow and almost dolorous.

Erik knows sorrow better than any other confidant he’s ever had, and so he assumes that weight is wrought solely of burdens.

But there’s a softness to the weight of Charles’s gaze, the way his eyes are gentle and his mouth quirks at just the corner; and Erik realizes that someone has sunk to the bottom of the sea with him, graceful and articulate.

Fathoms down, under dark water where flickering candles and tears hide, Erik finds Charles. 

There are no metaphors or abstract memories in sheets that smell of sex, of arousal and painful tenderness; there is only here and now and – _Erik don’t let me get too far in –_

_In too deep._

_Never._

A moan, arch of back, gasp at intimacy only ever realized through bones and rage.

_Erik._

Names. 

No memories, no mind prying; just names, repeated over and over until they no longer make sense. 

***

Charles has finally begun to collect his own memories, since he’s slowly realizing that youth is fleeting. His power might be great, but death will eventually come to collect him. Unlike Raven or Shaw, he has only a single lifetime.

He will remember, for the rest of that lifetime, the way that hot sand feels as it fades against his legs; but more so, the way that tears feel against his own face, when he can’t enter another’s mind that he so desperately wants to share them with.

***

Erik writes him letters in metallic ink without any return address. They arrive in the post regularly at the school. 

Charles makes it his morning exercise to get to the post box at the end of the drive (he long ago has convinced the mailman without much effort to leave the post in the box instead of walking all the way up the drive out of consideration). 

He always recognizes the neat handwriting on the front of the envelope: Professor Charles Xavier.

No one ever wrote his name like Erik.

Another memory he’s kept close: his name, scrawled on a hotel registry.

Their trip to find more of their own kind: lounging on velvet beds of gentleman’s clubs, wandering around New York City in search of just the right cab fare, a trip to a prison cell.

The shared rooms, and his name in Erik’s handwriting, checking them in. His name there in ink, in his memory; and now, his name in ink on an envelope.

He reads the letters alone in his room; they’re always benign fragments of sights and scenery, simple observations.

_Dear Charles_

_Today it rained. The ground is muddy and wet. Nothing compared to Georgia, though._

_E.L._

***

Even letters have become too risky, as Magneto gathers his mutant army.

Metallic ink is like any type of metal that can be torn up and mined, and so he chooses a week while Charles is away in another country to draw close to the mansion and reclaim his own words.

There was a reason he wrote the letters in metallic ink, and Charles always knew it.

The sentences of his own mundane letters cut into Magneto’s palms, the first splinters of metal he hasn’t been able to control – such is his loss of concentration.

He cradles them, all his own, like a precious thing; and he sends them back out in a language that only Charles can claim, a fleet of thoughts armed to the teeth with feeling. 

It’s the way things must be. He knows Charles will remember the words, what he said; that he won’t be surprised to find a stack of writing paper stowed away in his desk, tied with a ribbon, suddenly blank.

But in deepest night, Erik realizes he can’t recall what Charles’s eyes looked like that night they first met on the dark sea, coughing, sputtering and frightened.

And as his youth recoils like the words he literally took back from sheaths of paper, he begins to sleep with his helmet on, a chorus of dolorous, slow bells ringing in his ears.


End file.
